Tag: Recommended

Chirpy, eternally hopeful young Yukie works as a caseworker for elder care company Green Net. Unfortunately, thanks to the meddling of a jealous colleague, the senior citizens she’s dispatched to care for are the toughest cases: difficult, dangerous, and frequently supernatural. Yukie’s assignments include a …Read more »

In 1997, the late Satoshi Kon released what many would refer to as his magnum opus. It was called Perfect Blue, and it was written by Sadayuki Murai. Based on the novel Perfect Blue: Complete Metamorphosis from Yoshikazu Takeuchi, it was billed as a psychological …Read more »

Ran Uruma, a fourth-grader, lives with her teenage brother Jin and their father in their cluttered house. Ran dreams of following in her mother’s footsteps, which is no small dream, because Ran’s mother Shizuka is a powerful sorceress … so powerful that when she visits …Read more »

Junk Dog is a bum with little room for positive forward trajectory in his life. Part of that has to do with his general way of living, but the rest falls firmly in the lap of his coach, Gansaku Nanbu. You see, Junk Dog is …Read more »

It seems impossible we’ll ever again witness an anime like 1985’s Robot Carnival. The last great anthology film, Short Peace, went almost entirely ignored. The last great anthology series, Space Dandy, was at best misunderstood, at worst excoriated. Not for its quality, mind: as Jacob …Read more »

Born into a poor family in 1941, Tadao Tsuge grew up in the chaos and poverty of immediate postwar Japan: a rundown Tokyo of open sewers and ruined buildings, populated by thugs, prostitutes, and occupying American GIs. In the late 1960s and 1970s, these memories …Read more »

Originally revealed as an April Fools’ joke in 2017, Just Because! eventually came to fruition as an original anime TV series by studio PINE JAM (Gamers!, Mahou Shoujo Nante Mouiide-sukara), director Atsushi Kobayashi, and The Pet Girl of Sakurasou creator Hajime Kamoshida. The results are …Read more »

Noshiro is used to changing schools and being the odd man out, so when he sees his new classmate Sanada being shunned by their class, he steps in to end Sanada’s loneliness. But things are more complicated than Noshiro realizes, and befriending Sanada sets him …Read more »

As an amateur but talented photographer, high school student and orphan Tada Mitsuyoshi lives to capture presented moments, but how will body guard-protected, foreign transfer student Teresa Wagner encourage or change his raison d’être? If you’re a fellow anime cynic, the very term “transfer student” …Read more »

Sixteen-year-old Nakamura Okuto has just fallen in love for the first time. Not only is he head over heels in love with his classmate Hirose Aiki, but he’s absolutely clueless on how to act on those feelings. As he observes his blissfully unaware classmate every …Read more »

Based on Nisioisin’s light novel and with a tip of the hat to Graphinica’s anime adaptation, Juni Taisen: Zodiac War is now a manga as well. Akira Akatsuki, the artist best suited for the job, once again collaborates with the prolific author five years after …Read more »

In the 1990s and 2000s, an American manga reader might get the impression Japan was more progressive on LGBT issues than the US: American mainstream comics were aggressively straight, while manga was filled with genderqueer characters, sex-swapping, and gay romance. But in 2018, Japanese politics …Read more »

﻿We’re only partway through 2018, but Hinamatsuri is already one of the year’s best anime comedies. It’s hardly the kind of show that usually attracts attention from fans, but the six episodes that have aired as I write this combine an inventive premise with precise …Read more »

The aptly named Crisis City is protected from all manner of evil by The Undertaker: Grave Digger Kaede! This intimidating moniker belongs to an adorable little girl with a ton of power. Kaede is one of several children, dubbed the Crisis Girls, born with cursed …Read more »

One of the best things to happen to Devilman, Go Nagai’s horror manga masterpiece, is the inception of its expanded universe. The additions to the saga include complete reimaginings like Devilman G and Devilman Lady and expansions to the original story like AMON: Apocalypse of …Read more »